OpenLogic scores $2M for new open PaaS

OpenLogic, a software vendor that helps companies better utilize open-source software, is turning its attention toward cloud computing. On Tuesday, it announced $2 million in funding from Pelion Venture Partners, Red Rock Ventures, Appian Ventures, OnCorps, Highway 12 Ventures, Village Ventures and others for a new Platform-as-a-Service offering that lets developers choose from a variety of open-source components for building and running applications.

Called CloudSwing, OpenLogic’s PaaS supports a variety of application stack components, including LAMP, Nginix, Rails, Node.js, and Tomcat. It also gives developers a choice of infrastructure clouds on which to run, including Amazon Web Services (s amzn), Rackspace (s rax) and Microsoft (s msft) Windows Azure.

CloudSwing is currently available as a Trial Edition in beta, although DevTest and Production editions are in the pipeline.

OpenLogic might have a difficult time gaining traction among the host of existing and popular PaaS offerings, but it does have a significant point of differentiation by offering multiple choices at the infrastructure layer. Other PaaS providers will let users download the code and run it on the IaaS cloud of their choice, but the hosted option is typically limited to one provider.

And it’s still really early in the PaaS evolution, so there’s plenty of time for OpenLogic to make a name for itself. As DotCloud CEO Solomon Hykes pointed out to me a few months ago, all PaaS providers are really just trying to disrupt the legacy application platform space. “If anything,” he said, “it’s a net gain for everyone when a new solution brings something to the cloud camp.”